500GB sata showing up as 127GB (WTF?!@#)

[randall_o]

I have two 500GB Samsung SATA drives, both formatted, show up as 500GB
drives (372GB after NTFS formatting in WindowsXP, in Admin:Storage of
Control Panel). The first SATA is oddly showing as only 127GB capacity
though when I right click and look at its properties in MyComputer.
The second SATA is as expected, just fine. Can anybody help me solve
this mystery?

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

I have two 500GB Samsung SATA drives, both formatted, show up as 500GB
drives (372GB after NTFS formatting in WindowsXP, in Admin:Storage of
Control Panel). The first SATA is oddly showing as only 127GB capacity
though when I right click and look at its properties in MyComputer.
The second SATA is as expected, just fine. Can anybody help me solve
this mystery?

Any chance the problem SATA drive was partitioned accidentally during it's
initial configuration and only the first partition was actually formatted?

 

[Grinder]

Any chance the problem SATA drive was partitioned accidentally during it's
initial configuration and only the first partition was actually formatted?

It does seem suspicious that 372 + 127 ~ 500. At the very least, the OP
should not be satisfied with a 500GB drive only giving 372GB /after/
formatting. Even accounting for the whole 10^3 != 2^10 difference would
leave you with 465GB.

 

[randall_o]

Any chance the problem SATA drive was partitioned accidentally during it's
initial configuration and only the first partition was actually formatted?

Well I did initially have four satas formatted that i set up as
raid1+0, but then i removced the raid in the bios, reformatted the
sata drives. I just have sata1 and sata2 hooked up now, plus a couple
of IDE drives. Satas were reformatted as just plain old NTFS. In the
WinXP control panel, the sata drives both show up as 500GB (well
actually 380 or something because of the GB/gigabytes discrepancy),
but in MyComputer when I right click on the drives sata1 shows 137gb
capacity which if frustrating me. I do see a couple of WinXP folders
on that sata1 that I did not put there, I assume winXP put the folders
there-- folders with long random names with dollar signs and random
letters-- maybe those folders are using up space, but then why does
the Control Panel Admin Storage show the drives as being full
capacity, yet MyComputer shows sata1 as 137GB?!?

Now all that said, to throw another herring into the stew-- I had
recently upgraded my Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 software (video editing) to
8.0c and that really messed with my system-- spontaneous reboots,
crashes, funked with my BIOS changing drive boot orders, making IDE0
unbootable, putting strange names on IDE1 during boot. I had to delete
8.0c and reinstall 8.0 off the CD. Not sure, but maybe that has
something to do with this?

 

[randall_o]

It does seem suspicious that 372 + 127 ~ 500.  At the very least, the OP
should not be satisfied with a 500GB drive only giving 372GB /after/
formatting. ...

You got that right. I want that 500GB!!!! I am doing video editing,
and we are talking massive files and file storage space needed. A
137GB drive that should be 500GB stinks!

 

[randall_o]

Look at the volumes in Windows' Disk Management, confirm
that the partitions cover the whole drive and there is no
unused space.  If there is unused space you will need to get
any important data off, delete the partition, recreate as
the size of the whole drive then format  again.

Double checked. Disk management shows the entire disk as NTFS 372GB;
but when I right click and select properties, it shows 127GB capacity.
Makes no sense! I am at a loss, I have built maybe 20 computers in my
life, been computing since 1975, this just has me totally puzzled.
Identical Samsung sata drives (500GB, showing up at 372GB I suppose
from 1000:1028 conversions in doing the math and also indexing, file
table of contents, etc); one is acting as it should, the other is
being a rat bastard and showing 127GB capacity on the Properties popup
info box, but 372GB in the Disk Management window. WTF?!? Any ideas?
Should I right click and select "Mark Partition as Active" or
something? If this disk only held data I would simply reformat it and
restore the data; but I have installed about 15 software applications
to this sata drive because I wanted to take advantage of the speed of
loading the application software (I have WinXP on ide0). Any ideas?

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

I have two 500GB Samsung SATA drives, both formatted, show up
The first SATA is oddly showing as only 127GB capacity

Here's the deal. Out of the box, Windows 2000 and XP do not
necessarily enable their support for 48 bit LBA, which is needed to
gain access to drives larger than 137GB. Windows 2000 did not gain 48-
bit LBA support until SP3, and XP did not have it until SP1. If your
installation media is at a lower service pack level (it will say what
SP level will be installed on the disc face, if it is an original
Microsoft disc), you may not even have the ability to enable 48-bit
LBA support.

You can "slipstream" a newer service pack into your installation disc
and burn a new copy of it if needed.

This means that during setup, you may only be able to see the first
137GB or so of the disk, no matter how large it is.

Enabling 48-bit LBA support requires changing a registry key after
Windows is set up in some cases.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

Now...not all computers suffer from this issue. I have a Dell
Dimension 8300 that shipped with a 160GB hard disk from the factory. I
wiped it and set up Windows 2000 Pro (SP0) from scratch. It seems that
the BIOS in this computer somehow works around the problem...I was
able to partition and format the entirety of the 160 (149 usable) GB
hard disk from Windows setup.

Later, when I added another 200GB disk (186 or so GB usable), I had to
enable the 48-bit LBA support by adding the needed registry key--for
whatever reason (probably because it wasn't the boot drive?) Windows
would only see the first 137GB of that drive.

Both are SATA drives, and the Dim8300's hardware only supports PATA
emulation with its SATA controller.

William

 

[William R. Walsh]

Furthermore, you *must* enable 48-bit LBA support within Windows if it
is not already enabled. Without it, you might have data corruption
taking place any time something tries to get beyond the 137GB barrier.

I suspect this is what happened when you installed an update to Sony
Vegas.

William

 

[randall_o]

I suspect this is what happened when you installed an update to Sony
Vegas.

You mean the funky (buggy) Sony Vegas update funked with the registry
and messed up WinXP's LBA settings, thus funking with the LBA registry
value for the sata drive perceived size?

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

You mean the funky (buggy) Sony Vegas update funked with the
registry and messed up WinXP's LBA settings, thus funking with
the LBA registry value for the sata drive perceived size?

No, I think that XP's 48-bit LBA settings were already messed up.
Perhaps the update to Vegas needed more space and pushed beyond the
137GB limit.

But I could be all wet on that. Which drive was it installed on?

William

 

[randall_o]

Furthermore, you *must* enable 48-bit LBA support within Windows if it
is not already enabled. Without it, you might have data corruption
taking place any time something tries to get beyond the 137GB barrier.

I suspect this is what happened when you installed an update to Sony
Vegas.

William thank you for the great information; a bit intimidating, I
will certainly back up any data files on that funked sata drive before
I funky with the WinXP registry (which by the way now has SP3
installed). I think you are correct in that the Sony Vegas update
funked with my registry, thus funking with the drive capacity. That is
amazing, I would never have thought a piece of software could do so
much damage. But if you could have seen what it did-- spontaneous
reboots, after which the BIOS boot would show funky non-ascii
characters for the name of the drive(s), altered drive boot orders in
the BIOS, just plain Twilight Zone stuff. Since uninstalling that Sony
Vegas update and reinstalling the original Vegas off the CD, I have
been editing video and doing many many hours of rendering of video all
without system crashes. If I can just get my sata drive capacity back
I will be happy. I believe I added the second sata drive after all
those problems, thus it likely was not affected as was the initial
first sata drive.
Randall

 

[randall_o]

Enabling 48-bit LBA support requires changing a registry key after
Windows is set up in some cases.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

....

Printed out that tech fix, opened my registry, went to find the value
and oddly there is no such "EnableBigLba" registry value to set (to 0
or 1) for the Atapi Parameters; I found the Atapi folder, its
Parameters subfolder, but no such registry value. Somehow my system
must be detecting large drives (LBA) since my other sata drive is
showing its full capacity.

 

[randall_o]

Printed out that tech fix, opened my registry, went to find the value
and oddly there is no such "EnableBigLba" registry value to set (to 0
or 1) for the Atapi Parameters; I found the Atapi folder, its
Parameters subfolder, but no such registry value. Somehow my system
must be detecting large drives (LBA) since my other sata drive is
showing its full capacity.

Feeling out of options, I just backed up the funky sata drive, am
reformatting it. I will report back what happens, if it reformats to
the full capacity it should have. Thank you for all the help here.

 

[CBFalconer]

You got that right. I want that 500GB!!!! I am doing video editing,
and we are talking massive files and file storage space needed. A
137GB drive that should be 500GB stinks!

I suspect you have a bios limitation, and the code and/or interface
just doesn't have enough bits to address that size of drive. In
other words, you have an older machine.

 

[randall_o]

Feeling out of options, I just backed up the funky sata drive, am
reformatting it. I will report back what happens, if it reformats to
the full capacity it should have. Thank you for all the help here.

I am good to go now. Reformatted the sata drive, it look good, full
capacity now. Just restored all my files to it, data and applications,
and my apps work great. Thanks for all the help here again!
Randall

 

[JBJ]

I suspect you have a bios limitation, and the code and/or interface
just doesn't have enough bits to address that size of drive. In
other words, you have an older machine.

You wouldn't by any chance be running XP without service packs? If so then
install SP2 and then delet the partions on your hdds and repartion. XP
without service packs has a limmitation of 137GB. Besides that, as others
mention it might be a good idea to get the latest bios for your systeme.

 

[jaster]

Double checked. Disk management shows the entire disk as NTFS 372GB; but
when I right click and select properties, it shows 127GB capacity. Makes
no sense! I am at a loss, I have built maybe 20 computers in my life,
been computing since 1975, this just has me totally puzzled. Identical
Samsung sata drives (500GB, showing up at 372GB I suppose from 1000:1028
conversions in doing the math and also indexing, file table of contents,
etc); one is acting as it should, the other is being a rat bastard and
showing 127GB capacity on the Properties popup info box, but 372GB in
the Disk Management window. WTF?!? Any ideas? Should I right click and
select "Mark Partition as Active" or something? If this disk only held
data I would simply reformat it and restore the data; but I have
installed about 15 software applications to this sata drive because I
wanted to take advantage of the speed of loading the application
software (I have WinXP on ide0). Any ideas?

What does the bios show?

If it shows 500GB you have a simple partitioning problem but if the bios
reports a 127GB or 372GB (?) then you've got ripped off and should
exchange the HD for the correct size drive.

OR, if your motherboard bios is old it may not support larger than 127GB
drives and you'll have to use HD software driver to utilize the full
500GB or install a bios update that recognizes greater than 127GB drives.

 

[randall_o]

You wouldn't by any chance be running XP without service packs? ...

SP3 was installed.

 

[randall_o]

What does the bios show?  

If it shows 500GB you have a simple partitioning problem but if the bios
reports a 127GB or 372GB (?) then you've got ripped off and should
exchange the HD for the correct size drive.  

OR, if your motherboard bios is old it may not support larger than 127GB
drives and you'll have to use HD software driver to utilize the full
500GB or install a bios update that recognizes greater than 127GB drives.

BIOS showed 500GB, as did Computer Management in the control panel.
Only when looking at the disk *Properties* did the bizarre 137GB size
show up.